The surgery was so much larger and brighter than the ward that she knew that if there must be a separation between them she and McPrince had to be in the surgery and Bellini in the ward. Also the water supply was in the surgery and all the drugs that McPrince might need. She turned back, made sure that the bed was narrow enough to go through the doorway, then wheeled the bed through avoiding Bellini’s spread-eagled limbs. Next she dragged Bellini into the ward and spread the spare blankets over him.
She took a jug of water and his torch and placed them by his body, then dragged the section of storeroom wall into the surgery and closed the door after her. It hung by one hinge but it closed properly and she was able to turn the key in the lock. Finally, she put the section of wall across the doorway and jammed the bed against it. McPrince watched her all the time with a thoughtful expression.
“I heard him say we would be dead in a day,” she said. “What did he mean? Tell me all that has happened. I can’t make head or tail of it.”
“It must have been the Perseids that Captain Able spoke about on the intercom. I suppose Tony came to steal me from the ward but just as he blew the wall down the ship was hit and the air is escaping. There doesn’t seem to be anybody left alive on the ship.”
“Oh…,” said McPrince, and looked far away.
Over the rest of the day the air pressure slowly bled away to 8 p.s.i. Miriam suffered dizziness and panted like a dog. Bellini woke up, made a lot of noise on the connecting door and then fell silent. McPrince administered medicines to herself and slept sporadically. Miriam thought a lot about life and stared at the sleeping face of her companion. She was soon to die, and at nineteen that is a terrible realization.
Once she went as Bellini had done and pressed her ear to the surgery door, but she detected nothing. Most of the time her thoughts went back to her childhood and her mother, then an awful pang would go through her as she remembered that soon all these lovely memories would be blotted out; she would think no more; her mother would cease to be; her home would vanish in agony.
“Oh no!” she cried to herself. “It can’t be like that! Something must be left of me; something which can look down and watch all these heart-aching things.” She could not imagine final blackness, final sleep. When you sleep something is still there experiencing the sleep, and when she tried to imagine what a final sleep would be like there was always a watcher observing the blackness, screaming at it, banishing it with a flick of the mind. She would see herself hand in hand with her mother walking round the local shops or sitting in their sunny upstairs room drinking tea together and laughing. Tears of sorrow continually leaked from her eyes, but there was not much fear of the end, only a kind of disgust that her body would probably twist about and choke for lack of air.
McPrince held a hand out to her once as she caught her weeping. “What are you thinking about?’ she asked gently. “Come here. Tell me.”
Miriam caught the one good hand and sat silent for a long while. Then she said, “You must think me a silly baby the way I called you ‘mother’, but my mother was, is, the center of everything good in life to me and I miss her terribly. I couldn’t resist calling you ‘mother’; you are so like her.”
“Why did you leave her?” asked McPrince.
Miriam shrugged and looked a little guilty. “I used to think it was to make her happy, you know, to see me married. It isn’t easy for a girl to get married these days, is it? But I realize now that that wasn’t the reason…in any case, it didn’t make her happy, she was terribly upset when I told her. No; I think it was that I knew I had to break the bond if I was to have any life of my own. I guess I knew I could never find it while I remained on Earth. I applied for this flight on the spur of the moment…like a prison-break.”
She hung her head. “It was intolerably selfish, but I can’t help it.”
McPrince gripped her hand. “When life takes hold of you, you don’t stand much chance,” she said. “Don’t blame yourself. Every girl on this ship did the same thing. Now forget it, my girl, and attend to business. Make up some kind of a bed for yourself and then see if you can find the food tablets. There was a box of them in that cupboard over in the corner.”
The second day took twice as long to pass. The air pressure sank no lower; they did not die. Bellini had an hour of shrieking and howling and pushing at the connecting door, then he relapsed into groans and finally silence. McPrince was able to get out of bed and, with Miriam’s help, dress herself in a spare uniform. They talked about the possibility that there was someone alive on the ship who had managed to seal the leaks in the hulclass="underline" how else could the air pressure remaining stable be explained? They listened for long stretches at the surgery door hoping to hear footsteps outside. They talked about life on Mars. Miriam produced Franco Parzetti’s photograph.
“He looks a nice boy,” said McPrince. “Sensible. Not like.…” She nodded at the ward door. “How did you manage to get mixed up with him?” There was a lot of talk about that. The day eventually finished and they slept.
Day three began at double speed. In the small hours there was a tremendous noise and Bellini smashed his way into the surgery. His strength seemed to have doubled. He was waving the scissors Miriam had used to make splints and he obviously intended to do some cutting up himself. He had patiently used the scissors to chisel away the door jam round the lock and his eventual rush carried the door, the barricade and the bed before him.
McPrince had been in the bed and Miriam on the padded examination table in the center of the surgery. The bed was thrown over on its side and McPrince to the floor where she fainted with pain. Miriam, shocked into a confused awakening, flung herself sideways as Bellini plunged at her. She knocked over the mobile lamp and there was blackness. Bellini lunged in the darkness and buried the scissor points in padding. Miriam hit the floor and scampered off on hands and knees dragging blankets after her. Bellini stepped on a moving blanket and fell backwards, hitting his head on something that did not give way. He, too, fainted. There was a long period of respiratory noises.
Then: “Mary?”
More breathing.… “Tony?”
Miriam felt her way along the wall to the surgery door and then up the wall to the main light switch. All was revealed. Miriam did not waste time. She scrambled bandages out of a cupboard and tied Bellini’s hands and feet into an interlocked bundle. She then found the hypogun and loaded it with one of the ‘sleep’ ampoules. Then she looked at McPrince. Blood was staining the sheets wrapped round her, and when Miriam carefully unraveled her she found the bandages across McPrince’s back were soaked. Whether the bone in the arm had come unset she could not tell, but the binding and strapping still looked firm.
With the scissors she cut away the bandages from McPrince’s back and then began tearing the sheets into large swabs, gradually drying the flow of blood. McPrince groaned and roused. Quickly Miriam re-bandaged the torn area. She made an oblong of blankets beside McPrince on the floor and eased her on to it. “Don’t move. Let the bleeding stop. How is your arm?”
McPrince grimaced. “All right, I think. Thank you, Miriam. I shall be fine now.” She looked over at Bellini’s slowly moving body. “I see you’ve dealt with him. Good girl. He’ll need medication.… Or maybe the bang on the head will have brought him to his senses.” She looked surprised. “It seems to have brought me to my senses. I remember now there is a key to the door.” She looked around and then nodded. “In that drawer.”
“A key!” exclaimed Miriam. “You mean the door is only locked, not jammed? But I thought you never locked the surgery.”